


take my lungs / take them and run

by renjunarc



Series: the mini market on the bloody avenue [2]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-24 02:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18160205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renjunarc/pseuds/renjunarc
Summary: “Want me to wait for you?”Jisung gazes at him for a few moments. Then he smiles so broad that his lips thin and crooked teeth gleam underneath the blinking fluorescent lights.For a moment, Hyunjin feels his world come back together.or: There's another romance blooming in Strays' Mini Market.





	take my lungs / take them and run

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written anything in a very long time, so this kind of turned out ... bad ...?  
> if you don't practice, it's guaranteed you'll become rusty TT whoops.
> 
> but anyways, this is a second installment to the mini market on the bloody avenue series, containing hyunsung! the first one contains jeonglix (who are already together in this one). however, it is not necessary to read the jeonglix one in order to understand what is going on in this one, only if you wish to know how they got together and all that.  
> anyways... please enjoy TT  
> \-- SAL

“I think you have a crush on Jisung hyung.”

As an action of instinct, induced by shock, Hyunjin knocks over his cup of coffee. Jeongin, fellow co-worker and maknae among employees, looks down at the caffeine spill on the tiled floor in total disbelief. From somewhere in the aisles of merchandise, Felix’s (also fellow co-worker) tired sigh and deep voice travels through the air, “I’ll mop that too, I guess.” There’s the sound of approaching footsteps from one of the aisles furthest from the register, and he emerges with a mop and expression of defeated acceptance. Hyunjin continues to look at Jeongin with wide eyes.

“Me? Crush? On Jisung?” Hyunjin sputters. 

“It’s funny to see how all the charm and eloquence drains out of you when you’re caught off guard,” comments Jeongin, not laughing. He steps aside for Felix to come forward and mop the spill. “Anyways, yeah. I said what I said. Do you have anything to refute my statement?”

“‘Refute your statement,’” Hyunjin repeats incredulously. “What is this? A matter of debate?”

“I’m just asking for you to confirm my suspicions,” Jeongin crosses his arms. He sends a meaningful glance towards Felix while he isn’t looking. “It’s not like romance between employees is nonexistent in this market. I’m pretty sure there’s something going on with Changbin and Seungmin, and I  _ will _ find out.”

“You’re using big words,” Hyunjin says, pained. “Are you sure you’re younger than me?”

“My ability to incorporate efficient vocabulary into sentences has no correlation to my age,” Jeongin huffs. “I’m a good student who reads books.”

“Are you eating dictionaries for dinner? Or did removing your braces open your third eye? Felix, make him stop. Please.” Hyunjin whines, earning an amused smile from the blonde haired boy.

“Just answer me,” Jeongin says, annoyed.

Badly, Hyunjin wants to say no. He harbors no romantic feelings for his best friend, his partner in crime, and the bane of his existence --  _ Han Jisung. _

But then something in Hyunjin wavers and crumbles. His lower lip juts out in a pout and he wanders his gaze across the ocean of aisles before the cash register. TWICE’s  _ What is Love? _ croons softly in the air for perhaps the millionth time that night, and there are no customers roaming through the aisles of high quality goods for cheap prices. It’s too peaceful for a graveyard shift. He can’t help but think that it’d be better if Jisung was here too, sharing the shift, committing borderline criminal activities that he knows the others will not report him for, and making Hyunjin’s day a good day.

Oh.  _ Oh. _

“Yeah,” Hyunjin says, dizzy, “I think I have a crush on him. On Jisung.”

The frustration in Jeongin’s face melts into something softer. Felix finally looks up from his mopping, eyes gleaming with interest and understanding. 

 

 

“Hey,” Jisung greets him breathlessly. His hair is a wild mess and his pupils are blown. He has coffee in his hands, two iced americanos. 

“Hi,” Hyunjin blinks and dog-ears the corner to a page of his assigned reading book. The report is due the day after tomorrow, but he’s only read the first few chapters with _Death of a Bachelor_ blaring loudly over the speakers. He’s screwed, he knows it, but it’s alright, because he has this. He’ll always choose this.

“Long night?” Jisung grins, sliding one of the drinks his way, “I’m sorry I’m late. Seungmin isn’t on duty tonight, right?”

“Nah,” Hyunjin shakes his head. He takes one sip and sighs appreciatively once the taste hits his buds. He says, straw between his teeth. “Only Minho, but I don’t know where he is.”

“Thank god.” Jisung exhales. “Seungmin would kill me if he caught me coming late one more time.” Then he knits his brows together and pouts, childish and cute. “He holds too many grudges.”

“I understand,” Hyunjin nods sagely, knowing the length of Seungmin’s wrath all too well like everyone else who works here. “I came in late once and he put spicy chili in my coffee. I didn’t notice ‘til I got home.” 

Jisung cringes at the thought and reaches over the counter to give Hyunjin a consoling pat on the shoulder. When he pulls his hand away, the ghost of his touch lingers and trails further up the curve of his neck. Hyunjin imagines it cupping his cheek, his thumb sweetly stroking the beauty mark underneath his eye. 

For a moment, his breath hitches. He mentally kicks himself for letting his imagination run.

The younger tilts his head. “You good?”

“Uh.” Hyunjin answers intelligently. He licks his lips nervously. “Yeah.”

“Huh.” Jisung hums thoughtfully. He rounds the front counter and approaches the backroom door. “We’ve been best friends for years, Jinnie, but you’re always so weird. Never understood why.”

Hyunjin swallows thickly, and watches as Jisung disappears into the backroom to get ready for his shift. 

By the time Jisung emerges with his black apron and employee name tag reading  **HELLO, MY NAME IS** **ASSLORD 9000** , Hyunjin is hunched over his book, reading the lines but not quite digesting the meaning of the words. He does it in hopes that Jisung won’t bother him, and fortunately for him, he doesn’t.

 

 

Woojin and Changbin are the only ones who do the day shifts. There’s a gross imbalance between the shifts of day and night, 1 to 2, especially when the market is comparatively more busier during the daylight hours. 

Hyunjin wonders if he should lie to Chan, say he’s no longer available during the night, and switch shifts so he doesn’t have to come face-to-face with Jisung. In the backroom, he vocalizes this idea to Changbin while he indulges himself in a poorly timed lunch break, when Woojin is the only one available to apply purchases as the mart bustles with the supernatural.

“You’re such a coward, Hyunjin-ah,” Changbin says blandly, peeling the skin off his banana. Hyunjin wrinkles his nose and wonders how he could unironically like bananas as he does so. “Stop skirting around what you feel and tell him how it is.”

“If I do, will you tell Seungmin how  _ you _ feel?” Hyunjin asks.

Changbin inhales sharply. His nostrils flare. “Who told you?”

Hyunjin shrugs nonchalantly. “Jeongin.” 

The other groans and mutters  _ of course _ underneath his breath. He takes a bite off his banana and chews irritably, pointing his eyes up at the ceiling.

“I’ll try and tell him at some point.” Hyunjin mumbles. He means it, but he doesn’t quite know when ‘at some point’ is supposed to be.

 

 

“HYUNJIN, I THINK OUR MANAGER IS AN ALIEN,” Jisung states loudly. He’s in the middle of restocking the shelves, talking to Hyunjin through the method of screaming over the aisles. 

A mother, roaming the same aisle as Hyunjin with her three-eyed child, stares at him dirtily, as if silently demanding for him to deal with his co-worker for causing a ruckus around customers. Hyunjin smiles at her sheepishly and proceeds to reply to Jisung with competing volume. “YEAH? AND WHY’S THAT?”

“WELL I WAS LISTENING TO SOME RADIO PODCAST ABOUT ALIENS THIS MORNING!” Jisung screamed. Hyunjin turns his head to watch the mother and child leave, dissatisfied. If it wasn’t for the volume of Jisung’s voice, he wouldn’t catch the rest of his words over the blood curdling screeching of their mart’s welcoming song. “CHAN IS NEVER AROUND, DOING GOD KNOWS WHAT. HE COULD BE BLAZING IT IN HIS ALIEN CRUISESHIP, DON’T YOU THINK?”

“BLAZING IT?” Hyunjin repeats incredulously, blinking. “HE DOES WEED?”

“I WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED. SOMETIMES WHEN I COME TO WORK EARLY BEFORE ANYONE ELSE, THE BACKROOM REEKS OF MARIJUANA!” Jisung says excitedly, pronouncing marijuana as precisely  _ mary-jee-yu-on-uh _ . There’s the sound of rusty wheels grinding on their tiled floor, and soon, Jisung emerges from his aisle looking suspiciously dusty despite a simple restocking duty. “HE’S AN ALIEN, FOR SURE!”

“Okay, we can stop screaming. We drove away our only customers, and now I think my ears are ringing.” Or that might just be his heart, thinking in the place of his dumb brain, but who knows. (But if his heart is his brain, isn’t that bad in this situation, for he likes Jisung a lot?)

“Sorry,” Jisung giggles. His eyes are glistening with vivid amusement and mirth. He looks the most astonishing, the most childish, and outlandishly handsome. Then his pupils tremble and the smile on his face melts into something neutral, conveying a film of blankness to conceal his disappointment. “I have cleaning duty tonight … Aw man …”

Hyunjin’s head hurts. The sides of his skull pounds painfully, partially from not sleeping in the past 24 hours and from belting out competitive volumes against Jisung’s high decimal screeching. He glances at his watch -- 4:54AM; it’s almost time for his shift to end. He wants nothing else but to clock out from his shift, go home and cuddle with his dog to uninterrupted slumber. Despite this, he waddles his way towards Jisung and sets a hand on his shoulders heavily.

“Want me to wait for you?” 

Jisung gazes at him for a few moments. Then he smiles so broad that his lips thin and crooked teeth gleam underneath the blinking fluorescent lights.

For a moment, Hyunjin feels his world come back together. 

 

 

 _Stray’s Mini Market_ is a far walk from Hyunjin’s dismal apartment. It takes an hour for him to walk, 45 minutes if he rode his bike, and 30 minutes if he managed to catch the last operating bus in time. Mind you, all of these trips are done right before the hour of midnight because he constantly schedules for the graveyard shifts for no inexplicable reason other than _he_ _really hates himself_. Each journey to the small convenience store that attracts the odder side of the public makes him ponder why he chose such a strange part-time to be a faithful employee of.

But then he thinks about it and realizes it’s all Jisung’s fault. Not only is it because of Jisung did he entertain working in a sketchy area and act on the desperate need for the income to pay his rent, but he also convinced him that it was the  _ perfect _ place for him to work at -- co-workers, manager, general workplace and all. 

He hates it whenever Jisung turns out to be right.

Sure, perhaps the first few weeks working at the mini market were a little daunting. However, time and experience makes a person grow, and Hyunjin certainly no longer feels the anxiety that gives him nausea whenever faceless, robed entities drift into the market. It takes a little longer for him to warm up to the other employees, though, but he eventually realizes that all of them are absolute weirdos in their own way.

There’s the store manager, Chan, who is actually rarely around when one needs him despite his position title. There’s the regular day shift employees, Woojin and Changbin, both of which he doesn’t see very often either since he regularly takes the graveyard shift. Then there’s the buffoons he sees and works with on a regular basis at the ungodly hours of morning: Minho, Jisung, Seungmin, Jeongin, and their fresh meat Felix. He has different but similar answers prepared in reference to all of them, but it really depends on who’s asking and who are they asking about.

(No one tells him that Hyunjin rambles or takes a really  _ long _ time to string together the right words when he’s asked about Jisung. He doesn’t seem to realize it either. He remains blissfully unaware.

Maybe that’s for the best.)

Also, Hyunjin blames Jisung for is getting him addicted to iced americanos. 

He used to have an aversion to the bitter taste of grounded bean water and the gross aftertaste it leaves on his fleshy tongue. Then one humid night, Jisung shoved a plastic cup full of it into his hands, demanded him to drink all of it, and watched in satisfaction when he followed through. 

“You’ll need it,” Jisung reassured with a gleaming grin, moments after Hyunjin swallowed the last drop, “Graveyard shift is pretty harsh, y’know? You gotta stay up for so long. The things we see after the witching hour … you need to really prepare yourself.”

Swaying on his feet and feeling like he was going to keel over, Hyunjin nodded. “Yeah.” Then he vomited into the bush beside him. Jisung laughed at Hyunjin until his lungs ached and legs buckled underneath him. 

From then on, iced americanos became something like Hyunjin’s god and he still doesn’t know how to feel about it. All he knows is that he’s associated it with the sound of Jisung’s boisterous laughter and the image of his beautiful, gleaming grin. It’s one of his main reason why he drinks it every other night, other than the fact it helps him stay awake for his shifts. It tastes absolutely putrid, but at least it reminds him of memories he’s fond of.

Fond memories like … a long time ago. 

Kkami had belonged to an animal rescue shelter that did excellent in rescue but did a poor job of the sheltering aspect. Too many lost animals to accommodate for under one ceiling, in each cage, with the amount of available food dwindling and nobody willing to step forward to adopt. Eventually, the shelter resorted to transferring them to other open-spaced shelters, and when those shelters began declining their requests of transfer, animals began to become euthanized and used for chimerical experiments. (It would explain the increasing amount of amorphic strays and spider-eyed cats lingering in the district neighborhoods.)

Somewhere along the way, Kkami had escaped from the shelter, and Jisung stumbled upon the pup on the venture home. And because Hyunjin had been complaining about wanting a pet to medicate the hopeless and overwhelming feeling of loneliness in his chest the past few days, it was obvious where Jisung chosen to carry the pup to.

When Hyunjin opened the door to him, Jisung exclaimed jovially, “Merry Chrysler!” and held up Kkami like a prize. That night, Hyunjin cried for an hour, cradling the bundle of dog in his arms like a newborn babe while the pooch licked his tears and Jisung left to fetch groceries to accommodate the new member of the Hwang family.

Sometimes Hyunjin cuddles Kkami and thinks about Jisung, specifically how brightly his eyes glowed when he obtained a furry creature for him to dote on after days of whining mournfully. A part of him hopes his happiness is a part of the younger’s best and opportune interest. The rest of him knows it is.

As a place,  _ Strays’ Mini Market _ has become something that bares semblance to a home and functional family, but home is also in the form of his small dog, affectionately named as Kkami. And by extension of both, Jisung is home, because he’s brought both of those things to him.

 

 

“Tell him, hyung,” Felix murmurs, voice low. 

Hyunjin hangs his head. 

**Author's Note:**

> contact me!  
> and tell me if you like this!
> 
> twitter: @gayjisungie  
> instagram: @jaeminwyd  
> discord: sal#0914


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